Shane Osborn on Foreign Policy

Economic sanctions against Russia to stem Ukrainian crisis

Osborn supports economic sanctions against Russia to stem the Ukrainian crisis. Osborn says the US needs to move to replace the energy Europe receives from Russia. "I think this is a good opportunity for us to start exporting our liquid natural gas,"
Osborn said. "The leverage the Russians have is that they can shut off the pipelines to many of these European countries."

The energy ties Europe has to Russia hamper its ability to impose economic sanctions, according to Osborn. He says the US and
Europe need to cooperate on economic sanctions against Russia.

Osborn says this is no time to consider a military response, because economic sanctions should be enough to stem the aggression of Putin. "That's what we hope for. And I think it would hurt
Putin right away and it would be something that we need to take action for right now. Kick him out of the G8. Start sending clear signals. If he's worried about his financing going awry then he's going to probably make some different choices."

Learned geopolitics as Navy flyer posted in world hotspots

Our Navy flight instructor's relentless quest for excellence went beyond technical airmanship. He bombarded me with tactical questions from the mission commander's notebook. We were expected to learn the military structure and current geopolitical
policies of all the nations in the regions that the squadron patrolled. This wasn't just some theoretical college seminar, but a practical requirement for becoming an EWAC and advancing to mission commander.
At that level, an officer had to understand the exact nature of the potential enemy's military threat. If they painted your aircraft with fire-control radar, he asked, how likely were they to actually launch a missile?
Naturally, we also were expected to stay as current as possible on our government's attitude toward these countries and understand the kind of intelligence we were collecting and the reasons it was needed.